V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered at the

Third All-Russia Congress of 
      Textile[1]

Delivered:April 19, 1920First Published:Published according to the pamphletMinutes of the Third All-Russia Congress of the Textile Workers’ Union, Moscow,1920, verified with the verbatim reportPravdaNo. 83, April 20, 1920Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 519-525Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

(Stormy applause. Ovation) Comrades, permit me to
    thank you for your welcome and to convey to you the greetings of
    the Council of People’s Commissars.

The Party Congress just concluded and the resolutions it has
    passed are still fresh in our minds. And you are all aware, too,
    of the important tasks which the Party Congress has set before the
    workers, the peasants and the working people of the Soviet
    Republic generally. The sum and substance of these tasks is to
    create a united labour front.

It is fortunate for the Russian proletariat that the Civil War
    has been brought to a successful close; now that there only
    remains the menace of Poland, directed by the zeal of the
    imperialists of Western Europe, we have to make an incredibly
    difficult transition, we have to start building up our internal
    life.

In order to explain the tremendous change, in order to explain
    the difficulties that are now confronting the working class, I
    shall outline the chief stages in the development towards the
    communist system through which the Russian proletariat has
    passed.

Ignorant and unenlightened peasants, finding themselves for the
    first time in a factory, well equipped and supplied with wonderful
    modern machinery, used to be filled with amazement, overwhelmed by
    its unaccustomed magnificence. The peasant, in his ignorance,
    would regard the factory-owner as his benefactor and provider, who
    furnished him with work, and without whom the working man could
    not subsist.The helpless worker, coming from the stagnant, rustic
    life of the village into the seething cauldron of the factory,
    where he secured more bearable conditions of life, and the chance
    of making some kind of a living, would fall under the oppres-sive
    yoke of capitalist exploitation. Everybody knows what the workers
    of Russia and other countries experienced during this painful
    period. But then we see that the worker gradual-ly sheds his
    backward and crushed peasant manner and begins to rise to a higher
    level of development; we see him making the first attempts to
    combat the oppressors by means of strikes, the attempts of the
    disunited proletarian masses to organise in trade unions; we see
    the worker beginning to show signs of a new strength within him;
    we see that any strike, no matter how insignificant its results,
    always created something invaluable, something new, important and
    sig-nificant. Strikes taught the worker to realise that there is
    strength only in union with other workers, a powerful force
    capable of bringing the machines to a standstill and trans-forming
    the slave into a free man able to take advantage of the goods
    which belong by right to their producer. We are all familiar with
    the picture of development of the strike movement during the past
    few decades, its gradual progres-sion from small, disunited local
    strikes to wide organised actions. In 1905, a mighty strike wave
    swept over Russia. With the growth of the organised strike
    struggle against the capitalists, the worker acquired a hitherto
    unknown strength. The trade unions played a foremost part in
    this. The workers came to realise that all the achievements of
    technology, all the machines and implements of production, which
    the capi-talists used in their own interests and to the detriment
    of the proletariat, could and should become the property of the
    proletariat.That was a new phase, a phase of organised resist-ance
    to the capitalists through the trade unions; it was a new step
    forward in the development of the proletariat’s
    consciousness of its existence as a class. The worker was no
    longer a meek and helpless tool in the hands of the
    oppressors. His whole environment led him to the conviction that a
    constant, tireless and unyielding struggle was essential. The
    worker fought to secure a certain improvement in his economic
    condition, an increase of wages, a reduction of hours. At this
    stage of the trade union movement his hopes and dreams were
    directed to securing at least the elements of a decent life.

But although the proletariat’s consciousness of itself as
    a class even to this extent had at one time represented a
    tremendous step forward, there came a time when it, too, became
    inadequate. Conditions demanded a new advance.

The capitalists of the world had grown more insolent and after
    suppressing the working masses they held them fast in the grip of
    a world war, engineered in order both to continue oppressing the
    proletariat, which was struggling for emancipation, and to rob
    each other of territory. The imperialist predators, armed to the
    teeth, fell upon each other. They tried to persuade the workers
    that the war was being waged in the great cause of human
    emancipation. But the workers did not remain blind for long. The
    Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the Peace of Versailles, the seizure of
    all the colonies by Great Britain and France opened their eyes
    sufficiently for them to realise the true state of affairs. It
    became known that during the world war ten million people had been
    killed and twenty million maimed, and all this only for the
    further enrichment of the predators.

Once their eyes had been opened the workers rose against the
    yoke of capital; the social revolution broke out, started by the
    October events. Our duty now is not merely to be members of our
    trade unions-that is not enough. The workers must rise to a higher
    level, to develop from an op-pressed class into a ruling class. We
    cannot count on the peas-ants as yet. They are disunited and
    helpless, and it will be some time before they emerge from their
    state of ignorance. The peasants can be brought out of the slough
    of ignorance only by the class which itself sprang from the
    peasantry, , which has learned to understand the power of
    organisation and has been able to secure a better life-and not
    only under capitalism, for that was secured by the workers of
    Western Europe, but it did not save them from war. The workers
    must understand that they are facing a new and far more difficult
    task, namely, to take the entire administra-tion of the state into
    their own hand. The workers must say to themselves that as long as
    private property remains, as long as capitalism is not smashed, no
    one who lives at the expense of others should be allowed to wield
    power.

That is the object of the Soviet governments activities, a
    government for which the world proletariat is showing a rapidly
    developing sympathy. When it created the ne’w proletarian
    state, the working class assumed a tremendous burden. The workers
    can destroy the exploiting classes and bring about socialism only
    by going hand in hand with the peasants. The peasants are still
    working each for himself, selling their surplus in the open market
    and thereby helping a handful of robbers to become still
    richer. They do not do this wittingly; it is because they live
    under conditions entirely different from those of the workers. But
    freedom of trade means a return to capitalist slavery. In order to
    avoid it, labour must be organised in a new way, and there is
    nobody to do it but the proletariat.

The worker is now not only a member of his trade union
    organisation. Such a view would imply a return to the past. The
    fight against capital is not yet over. Capitalism is still
    impeding the measures of the Soviet government; it is doing so by
    profiteering, Sukharevka Market,[2]and so on. This force
    can be countered only by the force of workers’ organisations
    built on new principles, based, not on their narrow production
    interests, but on the interests of the whole state. Only when the
    whole working class, irrespective of trade or craft, succeeds in
    uniting as a ruling class and creating a united army of labour,
    will it win the respect of the world.

The peasants, convinced that Kolchak and Denikin have been
    smashed by the strength of the proletariat, are now feeling the
    firm hand of a good manager. But they will gain complete
    confidence in the proletariat only when attempts to restore
    capitalism will no longer be possible. Only then will the peasant
    understand that. there is no place for kulaks and parasites in a
    proletarian country. But the peasant does not as yet believe in
    his heart of hearts that the proletariat can cope with its great
    task.

The unparalleled privations of the past two years, con-sciously
    shouldered by the proletariat of Russia fighting in the front
    ranks of the Red Army, are not yet over. New pri-vations and new
    tasks face us, which will be the more diffi-cult the greater the
    number of victories we win on the Red front. Extensive territories
    have been won in Siberia and the Ukraine, where there is no
    proletariat like that of Moscow, Petrograd and Ivanovo-Voznesensk,
    which has shown in practice that it will defend the gains of the
    revolution at any price. Class-conscious workers must penetrate
    every pore of the state; they must know how to approach the
    peas-ants and organise them in the cause of the class which has
    flung off the yoke of the landowners and is building up a state
    without capitalists. Devotion and iron discipline are
    required. The entire proletariat, like one man, must achieve
    unparalleled miracles on the labour front like those achieved on
    the war front. Many at first thought that the revolution was a
    hopeless cause. The army in a state of complete col-lapse, mass
    desertions from the front, lack of ammunition -that is what we
    inherited from Kerensky. The Russian pro-letariat succeeded in
    rallying and knitting together scat-tered forces and in creating a
    united and stalwart Red Army. The Red Army worked miracles in
    repulsing the onslaught of the capitalists, who were supported by
    the capitalists of the whole world. The tasks of the labour front
    are even more difficult, immeasurably so. But while for the Red
    Army only men were required, we must now throw into the labour
    front all the able-bodied forces of the country-men, women, and
    even adolescents. We need iron discipline, and that is a weak
    point with us Russians. We must display determina-tion, endurance,
    firmness and unanimity. We must stop at nothing. Everybody and
    everything must be used to save the rule of the workers and
    peasants, to save communism.

The war is not over, it is continuing on the bloodless
    front. Here the enemy is still stronger than we are; that must be
    admitted. The petty producers, who sell their prod-ucts in the
    open market, are being assisted by world capi-tal, which with one
    hand is prepared to re-establish trade relations, and with the
    other is prepared to crush the prole-tariat and Soviet
    Russia.

All the four millions of our proletariat must be prepared for
    new sacrifices, new privations and new hardships, no smaller than
    those of the war. Only thus can we hope to smash the enemy for
    good. The peasant, who is still temporis-ing and vacillating, will
    then finally become convinced of the strength of the
    proletariat. The memory of the landown-ers, of Denikin and Koichak
    is still fresh in the mind of the peasants peasant; but he also
    sees laziness and idleness around him, and he says: “Yes, it
    may be a good thing, but not for the likes of us.”

The peasants must be shown something else. Let the work-ing
    class organise production as it organised the Red Army. Let every
    worker realise that he is ruling the country. The fewer we are the
    greater the demands made on us. Russia must be transformed into a
    vast army of labour heroically conscious that everything must be
    sacrificed for the common cause-the emancipation of the working
    people.

Everybody knows that the textile industry is at a complete
    standstill because today we have no cotton-it has to be
    imported-owing to the fact that Western Europe, too, is suffering
    from an acute shortage of raw materials. Our one source of supply
    is Turkestan, which has recently been won from the whiteguards,
    but the transport system has not yet been properly organised.

One means of salvation at the present time is to extract and
    prepare peat as quickly as possible, which will enable us to start
    all the power stations at full capacity and save us from being
    completely dependent on coal regions remote from Central
    Russia.

To rely on wood fuel in the present state of disorganisation is
    out of the question. The peat deposits are situated mainly in the
    textile districts. And one of the chief duties of the textile
    workers must be to organise peat extraction. I know that this is
    extremely arduous work: you have to stand up to your knees in
    water, arid, what with the shortage of boots and living quarters,
    the difficulties are immense. But did the Red Army have everything
    it needed? How many sacrifices, how many hardships the men of the
    Red Army bore when for two months they marched up to their waists
    in water, capturing tanks from the British! The capitalists are
    hoping that the workers, exhausted and starving, will not be able
    to hold out. The capitalists are waiting to pounce on the
    workers’ state, and their one hope is that the prole-tariat
    will be unable to cope with the task of creating a united labour
    front and will restore them to power.

I am very far from thinking that the work that faces us is
      easy, but all difficulties must and can be overcome. Every worker
      must help to organise labour, he must show
      the peasants that he is an organiser, and that work must be
      regarded as the
      only means of maintaining the rule of the workers and
      peasants. When Kerensky was still in power, the capitalists,
      realising even then that they would be unable to retain the
      factories, began to do damage to production, to conclude
      agreements with the capitalists of other countries for the
      destruction of Russian industry so as not to surrender it to the
      workers, and endeavoured to exhaust the proletariat by civil
      war.

The working class is facing a very severe test, and- every
    working man and woman must achieve even greater miracles than the
    Red Army soldiers achieved at the front. A victory on the labour
    front, devotion under the drab workaday condi-tions, are
    immeasurably more difficult, but are a hundred times more valuable
    than sacrificing one’s life.

Away with the old isolation! Only the worker who has proved
    worth his salt as a member of the Red Army of labour is worthy of
    being a trade union member. Even though we commit hundreds of
    mistakes, even though we suffer thou-sands of defeats, that will
    not daunt us. We must realise that only the persistent onslaught
    of the proletariat can secure victory.

For two years now the proletariat has been defending the rule
    of the workers and peasants. All over the world the social
    revolution is maturing. If we want to prove that we can cope with
    the task confronting us, we must, however dif-ficult the situation
    may be, maintain all our energy and assurance, all our proletarian
    enthusiasm, and achieve on the peaceful front of labour miracles
    as great as those of the Red Army on the bloody front of struggle
    against the imperialists and their henchmen. (Stormy
    applause)

[1]TheThird All-Russia Congress of Textile Workerswas held
    in Moscow, April 16-20, 1920. It was attended by 358 delegates, of
    whom 148 were Communists and 23 Communist supporters. The agenda
    of the Congress included the following: report of the Central
    Committee of the Union, the tasks of the trade unions, raw
    materials supplies, the state of the flax and woollen industries,
    the tasks
of the Union in rehabilitating transport, the food question, and safety regulations.

Lenin made a speech at its plenary meeting on
    April 19. On behalf of the Congress participants the Presidium
    congratulated Lenin on his fiftieth birthday, the delegates
    greeted him with loud applause. The Congress sent greetings to the
    Red Army and the Communist International.

[2]Sukharevka Market was a street market on Sukharevskaya (now Kolkhoznaya) Square, it was situated around the Sukharev tower built by Peter the First in 1692. During the years of foreign military intervention and the Civil War it was the centre of speculation. The name became the synonym for profiteering. In 1932 the Sukharevka Market was finally abolished and in 1934 the Sukharev tower was demolished because it interfered with traffic.